Mobile communication devices have become increasingly common in current society for providing wireless communication services. The prevalence of these mobile communication devices is driven in part by the many functions that are now enabled on such devices. Increased processing capabilities in such devices means that mobile communication devices have evolved from being pure communication tools into sophisticated mobile multimedia centers that enable enhanced user experiences.
Fifth-generation (5G) new radio (NR) (5G-NR) wireless communication systems have been widely regarded as the next wireless communication standard beyond the current third-generation (3G) communication standard, such as wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), and fourth-generation (4G) communication standard, such as long-term evolution (LTE). The 5G-NR wireless communication system is expected to provide a significantly higher data rate, improved coverage range, enhanced signaling efficiency, and reduced latency compared to wireless communication systems based on the 3G and 4G communication standards. Moreover, the 5G-NR communication system is an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless system designed to operate across a wide range of radio frequency (RF) bands, which include a low-band (below 1 GHz), a mid-band (1 GHz to 6 GHz), and a high-band (above 24 GHz).
A portion of the 5G-NR RF bands, particularly the low-band and the mid-band, overlaps with the RF bands currently used by the 3G and/or the 4G wireless communication systems. As such, the 5G-NR wireless communication systems are designed to provide greater scalability across all the 5G-NR RF bands. For example, the 5G-NR wireless communication system can scale down to operate in the 3G/4G RF bands based on the 3G/4G wireless communication standard for lower throughput applications and/or in suburban locations, and scale up to operate in the 5G-NR RF bands based on the 5G-NR communication standard for higher throughput applications and/or in urban/indoor locations. Notably, the mobile communication devices may be subject to different power requirements when transmitting RF communication signals in the 5G-NR RF bands and/or the 3G/4G RF bands. In this regard, the mobile communication devices typically employ power amplifier circuits to generate the RF communication signals at the required power levels. As such, it may be desirable to configure the power amplifier circuits to operate according to a wide range of power requirements without sacrificing efficiency and increasing a footprint of the power amplifier circuits.